Interview: Network Rail's Liz Baldwin on a new approach to renewals

Network Rail’s Southern Region is taking a new approach to renewals. Southern Integrated Delivery Programme Director Liz Baldwin explains the process to Richard Wilcock.

In this article:

• One region tries out an innovative way of working on upkeep and renewals for CP7
• Brings together engineering partners into one delivery team with closer collaboration
• Delivering cost efficiencies, value for money and productivity
• How the new approach can also favour biodiversity

Rail renewals remain one of the most difficult challenges on the rail network. Often, they are the product of necessity, requiring organisations, companies and contractors to work together in highly demanding circumstances.

They require a logistical approach, carried out in short timeframes against a backdrop of cost considerations and isolated working.

As Network Rail’s Control Period 7 (CP7, April 2024-29) kicks into action, with spending across the regions on upkeep and renewals laid out for the next five years, one region has studied the way it operates and decided on a different way of working, previously untested within rail.

Called the Southern Renewals Enterprise (SRE), it will help deliver NR’s Southern Region renewals programme across a possible ten-year period, ensuring that the plan of action signed off by Network Rail will be delivered.

The SRE programme fundamentally changes the way that NR and its partners approach renewal projects. One key element is the Southern Integrated Delivery (SID) programme, which is tasked with delivering the region’s renewals portfolio over CP7 and beyond.

It works by bringing together engineering partners including VolkerFitzpatrick, Octavius, AtkinsRéalis and VolkerRail, combining each companies’ strengths and integrating them into a delivery team.

Network Rail acts as the asset owner with responsibility for defining timelines and ensuring that the works delivery is completed. The partners will then have key responsibilities - VolkerFitzpatrick will be looking after buildings and civils, electrification will be the responsibility of Octavius, AtkinsRealis will oversee signalling, and VolkerRail will have control of the track.

Liz Baldwin is SID’S new director, joining from Mott MacDonald, having also held roles at Crossrail and HS2. She will oversee this project, and tells RAIL how this approach differs to those seen previously.

“In the past, for each Control Period, each asset type would have had a framework contract. These would be separate with different ones for track and different agreements for civils. All of this would be against a backdrop of Network Rail delivering capitals delivery.

“Historically, this would mean we would be working in silos and focused on the delivery and efficiencies in each agreement.”

The whole premise of SID has been borne out of the Institute of Civil Engineering’s (ICE) Project 13 principles.

These establish the roles and entities involved (usually an Owner, Integrator/Delivery and Supply Chain, which has been coined as the Ecosystem in SID’s instance).

It is based on an enterprise model, which basically means more integration that balances risk and reward, with teams incentivised to work together towards that reward.

Previous ways of working meant that collaboration was minimal. Contracts would be signed in isolation, works were determined in tranches of time, and priority was sometimes lost to cost and because some contractors would aim to uphold its original contracted terms and look past the minimal viable product.

“Sometimes, depending on the variables of each contract, we would see assets gold-plated as contractors would do what they were asked to do. But that isn’t minimal viable product and would be more than what was needed to complete the renewal,” Baldwin contends.

So, rather than looking at something in isolation, it fits into a wider long-term phase of work?

“Yes, exactly that,” she confirms.

She explains that one of the main purposes of SID is to increase the level of collaboration between contract holders. By eradicating the multiple individual contracts model that had been in place for renewing assets, all of which could be contracted to several individual companies, it looks at each project on a ‘best-for-portfolio’ basis.

“There are shared benefits and shared risks. Fundamentally, it means that all the partners have an interest in delivering,” she says.

And what they will be delivering as a team can be massive, such as completing the vast London Victoria station area resignalling programme - a project which started in 2022 and has so far included overhauling the signalling system south of the station and relocating signalling control to the new Rail Operating Centre at Three Bridges, as well as installing nearly 200km (124 miles) of cable. It will also be completing renewals of the SIMIS-W system in Havant, which was installed by Siemens at the turn of the century but not repeated elsewhere.

All that work is on top of the £797 million being spent on the huge Sussex Rail Upgrades programme, an ambitious scheme to overhaul its signalling and infrastructure.

A further £108m will be spent on reinforcing and managing off-track assets, as well as a combined £900m on structures and earthworks. Finally, nearly £100m will be spent on improving and maintaining level crossings.

A sceptic may look at the plans in place for CP7 and think that given the way rail is governed, and with such flux currently in the industry, any new way of doing things in one of the busiest regions on the network would be hard to implement.

But Baldwin believes that buy-in has been strong, and that common goals have been set.

“I have to say that Network Rail has planned this really well, because the reality for them is that the tender process has happened over many years. And that meant a lot of collaborative assessments, designed to understand how they could work together.”

So preparatory work has been completed and assessments done to understand the compatibility of each of the partners.

But Baldwin says NR has also carried out an internal maturity assessment, to understand how it (as an organisation) is set up for an enterprise model: “Network Rail recognised that it needed to come on a journey at the same time as its partners.”

Ultimately, however, the success of this programme will be in the delivery.

It is often a criticism aimed at NR (and in turn its contractors) that sometimes the collaborative effort needed on renewals projects doesn’t happen. Large renewals and infrastructure projects can get bogged down in bad planning or poor communications.

The woes seen on the Wales and Western Region - and especially on the Great Western Main Line, which suffered several serious delays owing to infrastructure problems and signalling upgrade issues last year - are testament to this. But as an organisation, NR has learnt some tough lessons.

For Southern, even before the SID structure was in place, its asset renewal performance was on an upward curve. The most recent assessment from the Office of Rail and Road concluded that the region had handled its asset renewal programme well - albeit work was still to be done on its backlog, as well as efforts needed with its sustainability. All these factors will be important in the project’s delivery.

Baldwin is as keen on the detail as she is on the potential: “We’ve been looking at integrated work bank planning. We’ve mapped all the renewals over the next five years onto a heat map.

“That told us that in Tonbridge, for example, we were going to do various interventions over a period in year two and not completing drainage work until year four.

“By combining the works, under a slightly longer blockade, it saves on remedial works costs.”

This all sounds like common sense. But given the fractious environment Network Rail and its contractors find themselves in, this wasn’t an approach that had been initially explored.

And where Baldwin has especially high hopes for this model is in opening up the channels of communications.

“In rail, and most civils actually, communications quite often happened in silos. It is a product of the structure and how renewals are done, but that is something this process can change.

“A great example of where this approach has helped is around ecology.

“Historically, we would go to do a piece of work on the railway in year two that had a badger sett, for example, on the embankment. We would have relocated the badgers a few hundred metres down the track.

“Then we’d need to come back and do some further work in year three to where we’ve relocated the badgers. Again, by plotting the work sites, we can see we have the badgers there, so we can move the badgers once - this minimises disruption to the line, and it doesn’t disrupt the wildlife again.”

Baldwin argues that this kind of collaboration would not be possible with individual contracts, because the forum to discuss it would not be available. While some detractors could argue that this just requires better communication between teams, it is the commitment from the partners over a very long period (in rail terms) that shows faith in the process.

Even so, what they deliver and how they deliver it will be the measure of a programme’s success.

Traditionally, renewals projects have been cost-driven. Their success has been measured by how much can be saved in the most viable way.

This isn’t necessarily the wrong approach - Network Rail would soon be criticised if it was seen to be frivolously spending money, or at least not applying conservative costings. But for this project to work, it needs to ensure that the approach is slightly different.

“The partners only get profit by delivering the volumes. They also only get profit if they work with works delivery, and they deliver. So, it means that works delivery are not the only ones incentivised. Every partner is incentivised.”

Drilling down a little further on how cost efficiency will play out, she notes: “Decisions are made on the best for portfolio basis, so we sometimes might make a decision that might be a little more expensive.

“We could also not quite meet the volume needed, because we’ve decided that’s best for our overall portfolio to make sure that we can deliver the volume under the renewals work bank.”

This is very much a departure from the ‘delivery for delivery’s sake’ approach. She adds that this approach doesn’t just stop at when the renewals are being actioned, but also on whether they need to be done at all.

“For example, we’ve gone in and done a survey on the drainage, which we discover is in a far better condition than you would assume. So, we’re recommending you don’t complete that work. There must be a higher priority somewhere else.”

What is clear is the need to question and assess almost every facet of the programme and the ways of working that are in place.

Of course, with everything Network Rail, success is measured by how much is saved or how much something has cost. With SID, this is of course a consideration, but it is not the only metric on which Baldwin and her partners will be measured.

“We have five outcomes that we must achieve to view ourselves as having been successful.

“We talk about the word value, not cost. And value is not always the cheapest thing, so the first couple of those is as you’d expect them to be - affordability and profitability.”

Baldwin explains that the third outcome is for the programme to make 10% efficiency savings against the final adjusted cost. Even here, though, SID plans on challenging itself by looking to stretch that 10% target by an additional 10%, and by consistently looking at ways of improving efficiency on individual projects.

She says that isn’t necessarily just about lowering cost. Delivering efficiencies also helps to improve productivity (something with which Network Rail has struggled).

The fourth and fifth targets are related to biodiversity. Network Rail, as an organisation, has a biodiversity action plan which aims to achieve a biodiversity net gain by 2025. And with the amount of works programmes that SID is aiming to deliver, biodiversity is far more integral to this than ever before.

Baldwin believes that the model (with collective responsibility and a larger £3 billion worth of work to deliver, rather than smaller projects) helps to focus minds.

The future sounds promising, but in the here and now, the SRE and SID are both just beginning.

The wider SRE is currently developing its procurement strategy and identifying gaps where expertise is needed. But it is also looking to engage with potential suppliers to ensure its approach can work with them. It’s time-consuming (especially when there is so much to be getting on with), but necessary.

There is a fear, however, that despite 30% of the supply chain having to be made up of small and medium-sized enterprises, eventually the ecosystem will become a ‘closed shop’ limiting innovation from outside.

But Baldwin explains why she hopes that won’t be the case: “I don’t like the word innovation because it implies something huge, where in reality it’s just a really great idea. If you’ve welded a track a little differently, it is innovative. But more than likely, it is an efficiency.

“I mention welding because one of the things we’re doing with the teams currently is welding trials, to see which way could be more efficient.”

Will that kind of thinking inform the choices within the supply chain?

“Absolutely. Those sorts of thought processes come from the people on the ground, doing this day in and day out. And we will be incentivising them, in the same way we are ourselves.”

It is hoped that the ecosystem will be less of a closed shop and more of a forum, with ideas on how to do things differently (or more efficiently) available to SID quicker.

It’s a bold strategy that the SRE is adopting, and it inevitably comes with pressure.

But Baldwin counters: “What we are here to do is the best job we possibly can. And if we can do that, I am not bothered about what everyone else is thinking. I just want to wake up in the morning and be proud and confident of the job that we’ve done.

“And for me, what good looks like is that other people want to follow this model and want to use this model to deliver renewals in other parts of the region.”

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